Picture from a misty morning at my house

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world

        and a desire to enjoy the world.

       This makes it hard to plan the day.

                                                                              E. B. White



HOUSEWORK

I hate dust. I dusted once – why is it dusty again?  I know, I know – it’s just a rhetorical question.  I hate dusting.  To be truthful, I hate housework.  You’d never know it if you took a quick look at my house – it is almost always neat and picked up.  Few people believe me when I tell them that’s because I’m lazy. I don’t want to have a big pick-up-and-straighten job to do so I neaten as I go. But the dust does accumulate.  Don’t come here wearing your white gloves, otherwise I’ll make you use them to do the dusting.

Spruce pollen cloud

I didn’t have to think much about dust for about a quarter of a century. We lived about twenty miles from the nearest city in upstate New York, out in the clean air of the country where the dust didn’t accumulate very quickly. Well, I must admit that during pollen season in the middle of the woods it could be a bit (a bit?) messy. And it didn’t come all at once: maple, oak, beech, evergreens – they took their turns. Brush past a spruce and it would explode with pollen. The mess stayed mostly outdoors on the porch and patio furniture.  A good hosing took care of it.

Here at SCCL I’m starting to think there are little dust elves sprinkling the stuff around when I sleep.  It isn’t as bad now as when they were building new houses around us, but it almost seems as though I could dust every day. It also seems as though I am less and less inclined to do any housecleaning at all.

On one recent sun-shiny day the angle was just right for the light to reflect off the floor into some of the neglected corners, and on to some of the kitchen cabinets – egad! I hate that kind of sunlight almost as must as I hate dust.  Well, I embarrassed myself into getting out the floor mop and the cleaning spray and sponges and I tackled the job: not just the mess so blatantly lit for me, but the whole floor and all the cabinet fronts. Counter tops too while I was at it. I did draw the line at washing the walls and pulling apart and cleaning the appliances. I mean enough is enough.  I do realize that I felt soooo much better for having done the job – but no one was there for me to brag to. Ah, well. I’ll get my reward somewhere later on in life – I hope!

Just thinking about how my mother and her mother kept house makes me ache all over.  My mother’s mother’s house shone from top to bottom. It will suffice to tell you just that she washed all the walls in her house at least twice a year. Though, like her mother, she did take apart and wash her refrigerator every Thursday, which I think excesive, my mother must have thought her mother's wall washing was the excessive thing. Most of Mom's walls were wallpapered, and the painted walls in the kitchen and bathrooms got washed perhaps once a year, and when I got older sometimes they were washed by me! 

I’ve lowered my standards even further. I take after my other grandmother: I’m lazier. That gal was one of the original liberated women: her house was, as they say, “Clean enough to be healthy, dirty enough to be happy.”  She had places to go, people to see, and go and see she did. 

And so do I! 

Amen to that!

ARE YOU STUFED YET?

        Do you walk into your house and feel like you’re walking into Fibber McGee’s closet?   Do you hear George Carlin (yes, the old Hippy Dippy Weatherman!) talking about “stuff”? He complained: “my stuff has stuff”.  Is your home getting stuffed?   Did you move every last thing you owned to SCCL?

        Peter Walsh, the ‘Organizational Expert’ you may have seen on the Learning Channel or Oprah, calls it “memory clutter” - it can interfere with the enjoyment of our lives and our homes.   We began our monstrous collections when we were very, very young.  We collected things because we liked them, because someone special gave them to us, or because we just could.   Along the way we forgot to how to drop what we no longer needed or what was threatening to overwhelm us.  We just hate to part with furniture or electronics or old birthday cards.  There’s always that sentimental, rarely practical,  reason that stays our hand from getting rid of stuff. These days you can find oodles of organizational hints.  What we seniors need is not organization for our stuff but elimination of a good lot of it.  I’m here to motivate you to make clearance your next project. 

        When we were in the process of moving to Sun City I came upon a saying that went something like “when the furniture heaves off your life you will love the deliverance.”   Well I must say I did delight in the deliverance: less stuff to pack, to move, to find space for in the new house, to clean, to maintain.   First I checked with the kids.  Lots of nice things from Christmas treasures to silverware found new homes away from ours.  I read about a gal who put it to her children like this: “Don’t be concerned, I’m doing just fine, but I’m writing my will.  What do you want of what I’ve got.  Better yet, come on over and take it now!”   Unless it’s your false teeth or eye glasses, what can you loose? Let them ask for what they’d like now - you can always say ‘no‘, but the best thing would be ‘yes’.

But sometimes something's
gotta give!

       Books? My books had books.  I was moving from a house where my husband had built in all the bookcases and storage I could ever need - built in, not moveable! Now the Stephentown Memorial Library has the majority of my books. I was told that many were sold to aid the fund for the new wing, and a quite few were chosen to be added to the shelves.  Made me happy to know I could leave something of value there.

       Living in over a half a mile on a dirt road, and that road off another road infrequently traveled, I saw no point in having a garage sale for much of the stuff that was left.   After all, who would want this stuff if I didn’t want it?  Well, they might, but I didn’t want to bother having a sale. Boxes and boxes of stuff found their way to the Salvation Army.  Boxes of craft supplies and fabrics went to two young teachers of my acquaintance.   What have you got that you no longer use or want and can box up and donate?   Keep good track of some of the better stuff you donate because there’s a nice level of tax deductibility to much of this. 

       What I do still have are pictures of my stuff.  Originally, the photos were taken for household insurance inventory.  They proved to be a treasure.  I’ve got pictorial records of many of the items I’d collected over the years, of the ways in which I changed the décor of the house depending on what curtains or quilts or crafts I’d made, and, to me, the most treasured: pictures of my books.   Most of the books I’d kept had been read two or three times.  I’d always felt that just looking at the title on the spine of a favored book brought the whole book back in an instant.  Now I can look at the pictures and get that same feeling.  If I really need to read it again there’s always the library nearby.

        It might not be easy to peddle your unwanted stuff on the street corners of Sun city, and you might want to get rid of that stuff before the next community tag sale. Let’s face it: after the tag sale you’d  still have leftover stuff to give away.  You might think of selling your stuff on eBay.  I did that once: we sold my husband’s charter collection of Fine Woodworking Magazines.  It was a pain to have to be available on-line to answer possible questions from potential buyers, and when we did get a buyer we had to find boxes, pack up the collection, schlep it all to the post office, etc. 

        So, think of Google and these on-line or local resources while you are de-stuffing your house and your life:

             Legal web sites - for retention schedules for personal records.  Many of us are overwhelmed with paper records we no longer need.  Be sure to shred the discards! 

             Manufacturers web sites - for owners’ manuals for your electronics, tools, and appliances. Who give house room to more unnecessary paper?               

             Goodwill Industries, The Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, National Furniture Bank - for organizations who will be happy to have your used furniture, clothing, appliances,  what-have-you?  Many Goodwill depots for your more portable discards are right nearby in Waxhaw and Fort Mill, to name two.  Many organizations will arrange pick-ups. 

             The Del Webb library or our own lending library at the Lake House - for books, CD’s, VCR tapes and DVD’s. 

    

       See that?  Don’t you feel better already, now that you’ve begun just by giving a bit of thought to paring down your stuff?  So, where will you start?  Don’t just sit there - go do it!

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH

Heads up all you friggatriskaidekaphobics and paraskevidekatriaphobics: this year we’ll enjoy three Friday the 13ths.  Triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13.  It is from the Greek: tris means 3, kai means ‘and’, deka means 10, and phobia means ‘fear’. The word was coined 100 years ago in 1911.  Frigga was the Norse goddess for whom Friday was named, so add her name to the front and it becomes fear of Friday the Thirteenth. I won’t begin to decipher the meaning of that second word; it suffices to say it means the same thing. 

In western culture, the number 13 is widely associated with bad luck. No one wants to live on 13^th Avenue, or have an apartment on the 13^th floor.  Hotels also eliminate the 13^th floor, but the floor is really there, isn’t it?  It’s just been renumbered.  Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. For ages the number thirteen was just one of many and had no special significance.

The superstition surrounding 13 seems to have arisen in in medieval times.  It is said that folks became aware that there were thirteen at the Last Supper, and thereafter tried to avoid thirteen - not only at a table but everywhere else.  Norsemen may tell you that when the mischievous Loki crashed the party at Valhalla to which Odin had invited eleven of his closest friends, all Niflheim (that’s Norse for hell) broke loose, resulting in the death of the beloved Baldur. Another case of thirteen at the table.

Fear of Friday the Thirteenth, that paraskevidekatriaphobia, is a newer, just as irrational fear.  Some point to the fact the Jacques de Molay and many of his fellow Knights Templar were arrested for heresy on Friday, October 13, 1307, but many other significant events, good or bad, could have taken place on other Fridays the Thirteenth.  It really seems to be a combination of fear of 13 and the fact that many people wouldn’t care to start anything on Friday.  Actually, neither would I. Not that it really matters, but starting a job on a Friday seems strange: Monday, with the whole work week ahead, seems more logical.  Folks don’t usually want to get married, start a business venture, move, start a trip, or even give birth on a Friday.  “Friday’s child is full of woe.” 

There are probably a baker’s dozen of reasons to admire the number thirteen: a baker’s dozen cookies, or loaves or biscuits, fits nicely on a baking tray.  Thirteen is a prime number, divisible only by 1 and itself.  It is also a Wilson prime and a Fibonacci number, but that’s more mathematics than we need to know right now.  There were thirteen original colonies in our United States, and thirteen stars and stripes on the flag. We’ve added a star as each state was admitted to the union, but we’d be down to pinstripes if we hadn’t kept just the original six white and seven red.

There are thirteen players on a rugby team and thirteen cards in a suit. At thirteen you become a teenager and can watch all those PG-13 movies.  Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal, and Dan Marino wore number 13. Alex Rodriguez wears it for the Yankees today. Well, that’s not quite a baker’s dozen reasons, but you get the idea.

And by the way, it might come in handy to know that for some obscure reason the first Friday the Thirteenth of the year is also observed as Blame Someone Else Day.

     Don’t look at me: I didn’t think of it.

P.S. In searching the net for pictures to go with my essay, I came upon this electronic version of and old American Express ad I cut from a magazine and stored in one of my scrap books years ago.  Something about it just struck a chord in me, and I thought I'd add it here for you to see too.

That's the jockey Willie Shoemaker, 4 feet 11.5 inches tall, leaning on our No.13, Wilt the Stilt, at 7 feet, 1 inch. 

TEMPTATION AND THE NEW YEAR

Yesterday would have been the 100^th birthday of the well-loved author and humorist Sam Levenson.  It is also two days until we begin a new year, and one of Levenson’s sayings is appropriate for the season: “Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we’ll find it.” Do you make New Year’s resolutions?  Have you thought about them yet?  They have a lot to do with temptation and the resistance to it.              

I’ve known few people who actually kept their New Year’s resolutions. Have you known any? Not that my halo is on too tight – I’ve never kept any other resolutions – but, along with my husband who did it too, I gave up smoking over thirty years ago. Oh, I was tempted more than once to start again, but something kept me from back sliding. (Oscar Wilde once said “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it,” but he was an extreme example of too much giving in.)  Our resolution to stop smoking was a wise one. Our health is probably better for it, we probably smell nicer to the world, and just think of all the money we’ve saved over the years.

Though many of us don’t make any these days, I suppose it’s not a bad idea to make New Year’s resolutions. If we are tempted and we give into it, at least we can say we tried. As seniors we’ve probably got so many new years past, and relative few new years ahead, that it’s probably a case of “been there, done that”. If we haven’t given up the smoking or the drinking, or haven’t lost the excess weight, it will take a major health crisis, not the New Year, to shake us out of our habits.

I’m telling myself that I’ve gotten this far in life, so from now on I’d like, cliché though it may be, quality over quantity.  I know, I know: I’d probably have more of both if I mended some of my ways, but I’m so set in them it will take that major health crisis to jolt me.  I’ll let you know if it happens.

MY GERM THEORY

"Is this bacteria I see before me?"
 Louis Pasteur - not!

       

December is Hand-washing Awareness Month, and I have my own Germ Theory: aside from the really germy places and things in this world, we’re all better off exchanging germs and becoming immune to them.  We can’t escape germs. We’ve got to deal with them according to their threat potential. *

       

I sigh when I see a shopper sanitize the shopping cart handle at the super market, then go blithely on and touch all the items in the store.  She’s got her own germs on her hands - I didn’t see her sanitize them - and will spread them around the store. She’ll pick up the donations of others, and then she’ll bring them home to her pantry. 

       

Once upon a plane trip, I saw an unaccompanied youngster enjoy every bite of her bagged lunch. Then, dutiful little girl, she got out the sanitizer and de-germed her hands. Wrong way ‘round child!

       

The little girl aside, I sometimes think that these sanitizing souls are assiduous in their endeavors only when they are in a place where, consciously or not, they think that they might be seen and judged.  It is certain that once a bit of internally-applied alcohol takes effect, no one washes their hands while circulating at a cocktail party - although the rule for hors d’oeuvres is ”you touch it, you eat it”. Just think of all the hands you might shake, all the germs you might attract.  Do you care? Of course not: it’s a party!  

I’m not advocating the complete abandonment of sanitizing hands. It’s flu season, thus the main reason for this month’s observance. Sanitizing hands is de rigueur in many medical offices, especially those where you sign in using a palm scanner. This is logical. What better place to catch a bug than in a medical venue - some hospitals are notorious. The last time my husband was in the hospital, I was pleased to observe the regular use of the contents of the ubiquitous sanitizer dispensers by the doctors and staff there.

As I did my early-morning water walking in the pool, I look over and can see them in the gym: those fastidious folks who carefully sanitize the equipment handles before they even begin to work out. Turns out that this is the wise thing to do because the truth is that gyms, with all the sweat and moisture there, have become some of the germiest places around - and they’re not just ordinary germs: Fungi to cause things like athlete‘s foot, viruses for colds and flu, and really nasty bacteria like MRSA. Just push open the door to exit the gym and there are those germs awaiting you.

GYM GERMS ARE NASTY

       

What I am advocating is heightened awareness and heightened combat with those really germy places and things: gyms, hospitals, rest rooms, packaged meats, kids’ diapers or runny noses - you know where and what. I am advocating a bit less paranoia, a bit less of the Howard Hughes hazmat mentality, and a bit more common sense elsewhere. Yes, be conscious of where you are and what you might touch with those germy hands.

The best advice is to remember your Mom’s words: “keep your fingers out of your mouth”, “don’t rub your eyes”, “wash your hands after you go potty”, or “dinner’s ready - go wash your hands. ”   You know the drill.

       

                                                       

  * January 2012 - I was just made aware of this excellent article: The 10 Dirtiest Places in Your Home.   Full of common sense and good advice, it is an excellent tutorial. You can find it at   http://www.onlinecertificateprograms.org/blog/2012/the-10-dirtiest-places-in-your-home/   Go read it and heed it - You know the drill!

TO ANTARCTICA WITH AMUNDSEN

LOOK AT ALL THAT RED, WHITE AND BLUE!

I am of the personal opinion that the Norwegians are the greatest explorers who ever lived.  Much can be said for any explorers such as the Spanish and Portuguese explorers, or for the 15^th Century Chinese, but the Norwegians took the cold and nasty routes. Picture the Vikings in their open longboats in the North Atlantic; picture Tor Heyerdahl out on a raft like Kon Tiki or a flimsy, sinking reed boat like the Ra; picture Roald Amundsen on the way to the South Pole.

When the ill-fated British explorer Robert Scott arrived at the South Pole only to find that he had been beaten to the prize by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team who had reached the pole the previous month, he said “Great God! This is an awful place.” “It’s a place that wants you dead,” said Robert Swan, the environmentalist who walked Scott’s route in 1985.

Orville and Wilbur Wright had their first successful flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in December 1903, just eight years before Amundsen’s trek. Amundsen couldn’t wait until that mode of transportation was perfected, so he took his men and his dogs, sleds and skis, and proper Eskimo clothing and supplies, and, after setting up forward supply bases, headed south from the Ross Ice Shelf.  The first attempt failed because of extreme cold weather. 70 below zero is a bit extreme.  The second attempt began on October 19.  They took just under two months, covering about 800 miles, to reach the pole on December 14.  This trip was no picnic.  They got caught in a blizzard, suffered from frostbite, and had to eat some of their dogs, although this last had been part of the plan.

In his book, The South Pole, Amundsen wrote: "I may say that this is the greatest factor -- the way in which the expedition is equipped -- the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order -- luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck."  Amundsen had planned properly, Scott had not.

Things have certainly changed in Antarctica over the last hundred years.  Once a pristine place just for penguins, it is now an important scientific outpost and a bit of a tourist attraction. Most of the thousands of tourists to Antarctica arrive by cruise ship and do not venture beyond the coast.  The penguins and ice bergs are their main attractions.  This year the tourist numbers will spike because of the anniversaries of Amundsen’s and Scott’s arrivals.   The aptly-named Amundsen-Scott Research Station, manned by 50 scientists year-round, and about 150 more in their summer, is run at the South Pole by the National Science Foundation. The studies there include biology, glaciology, meteorology, geology and a lot of other -ologies. They are not too happy about all the hundreds of people who are arriving on their door step to commemorate the hundredth anniversaries of Amundsen’s and Scott’s arrivals.   Beyond accepting letters that will go out with a South Pole postmark, they have little or no provision for tourists or adventurers, especially those who run into trouble.   

Today’s scientists can fly, in the right weather, right to the South Pole or wherever on the continent their stations might be. This year’s special tourists will pay tens of thousands of dollars to get to this “awful place”. Some folks will take catered, gourmet flights to the pole. Some want to be dropped off a degree or two away so they can ski in.  Amundsen and Scott took the overland route, and this year’s adventurers will be able to do the same. There will be several different ski races, endurance races, over Amundsen’s and Scott’s routes. The competitors will be equipped with everything from the latest extreme-weather clothing and shelters to GPS devices. Of course it is comforting to note that there will be airplanes on hand if anyone needs to be evacuated. Too bad this wasn’t an option for Scott and his team.

DECEMBER IS A MONTH FOR ALL

When I was in my high school chorus, years ago, we did a piece called December is a Month for All at our winter concert.  It’s been so long since that was part of the choral repertoire that I can’t locate it on the web, but it was a collection of songs from both the Christian and Jewish traditions.  Today I can’t remember exactly which Christmas carols were sung, but I do remember some of the Jewish songs especially the one about Judah “with his shield and sword” and Hannah and her “sons who glorify her name”, because they were new and interesting. 

The mix of winter celebrations has always been fascinating to me. Over the years, whenever I heard a new tidbit of lore, I’d do a bit of investigation to learn more. The winter solstice, when the sun begins to shine for a longer time each day, was celebrated in almost all of the cultures of the northern hemisphere.  Think of the many megalithic monuments that serve as calendars to insure the correct date of the solstice, and think of all the observation and study that went into the precise building of them. Inquiring minds wanted to know. Picture a tree growing from the base of the pagan celebrations of the winter solstice. The rites of the celebrations were many and varied and usually lasted for days.  Today’s winter celebrations are branches of that same tree.  They are all holidays - festivals or celebrations - rather than holy days or solemn commemorations.

Spring lambs springing

It is generally agreed that Christ was born when the shepherds were abiding in the fields, watching their flocks at night, so it would have been almost any time of the year except winter.  Most likely it was the spring, but the proselytizers, the spin-doctors of the early Christian era, in an effort to attract pagans to their way of worship and thinking, cleverly placed the celebrations of their major and most attractive events to coincide with those of the solar calendar.  The spring equinox became Easter, and the winter solstice Christmas.



CELEBRATING LENAEA



The winter event was celebrated as Saturnalia in Rome, Yule by the Germanic people, as Lenaea, the Festival of Wild Women (I like that one!) in Greece, and under many other names by people such as the Druids, the Buddhists, and the natives of our own southwest.  Until the more modern spin doctors of the eighteenth century elevated it again and made it more lucrative, Christmas was celebrated as a very minor holiday; Easter was the major holy day.  In some places, such as Cromwell’s Puritan England of the 1700’s, the celebration of Christmas was banned.   Many Christian sects still do not celebrate it.

There is more real history associated with Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, than with Christmas.  Starting on 25 Kislev, a date on the Hebrew calendar, Hanukkah, in its modern spelling, is an eight day festival commemorating an event in 165 BCE.   On that day the Maccabees drove the army of Antiochus IV, king of the Syrians, from the Temple in Jerusalem.  In celebration, they rededicated the Temple, and lit the eternal flame.  They had only one day’s supply of consecrated oil, but it lasted for the eight days it took to prepare and consecrate a new supply.  This miracle became a good reason for a winter celebration, and, minor though it was then, it was a good antidote to the Greek festival celebrating Zeus. Yes, it too was a minor holiday, but in the last century it came into prominence perhaps as another antidote - this time to all the Christmas hoopla.

Most winter symbols transcend religion. Greens, especially evergreens as boughs or wreaths in the north, were always a part of the solstice celebrations. Many rural homes shared their living space with the livestock.  In many homes the windows were for light, not air, so in northern climates the unglazed windows were covered over in winter. It was customary, probably downright necessary, to bring fresh-cut evergreens into the homes to freshen the air during the winter months.  Candles too are part of the winter celebrations.  Whether the eight on a menorah or the multitude on a Christmas tree, real candles or electric, they represent the light and joy of the season. 

“Chrismukkah” has become a slang term for the combination of Christmas and Hanukkah celebrated in religiously mixed households.  The word sounds like a phlegmy cough to me.  All commercialism involved set aside, both holidays should be enjoyed and celebrated separately and fully in all their beauty and colors and traditions. 





ANYTHING FOR THANKSGIVING?



MY SISTER AND I,
 DRESSES AS GYPSIES



     Many folks I know from other areas of New York City never heard of this, but where I was born in Queens, New York, we didn’t go out Trick-or-Treating on Halloween, we ragamuffins went ‘begging’ on Thanksgiving. In the morning we were dressed up as beggars or Gypsies, in whatever old clothes were usable, and we went from door to door asking “Anything for Thanksgiving?” I was only in the second grade when my family moved from the city out to the country wilds of Long Island’s Nassau County, but my city memories tell me that we came home with apples and oranges, nuts and cookies, and perhaps a cup cake to add to the bounty of the day.

        Some recall that the items collected were given, in turn, to the various churches to then be distributed to the poor. I don’t recall this. I do recall a lot of walnuts at the bottom of my bag.

SAINT MARTIN'S DAY IN THE NETHERLANDS

The custom may have a connection to November 11^th, Martinmas, the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of beggars and the poor, or St. Catherine’s Day, November 25^th, both of which dates are used by many European cultures to signify the end of autumn and the coming of winter.  On either or both days, depending on the country and culture, children would dress up - or down! - and go around the town, especially with lantern on St. Martin’s Day, singing appropriate songs and, in many places, receive donations of food or money to be brought to the church, or get sweets for themselves.  Many countries celebrated with large, festive meals.

        It’s a certainty that the ancestors of these children brought these customs with them when the emigrated here, especially to the east coast, and they were gradually merged with the Thanksgiving traditions already in place.  Depending on the ethnic makeup of a neighborhood, some or all of the traditions carried over.  I’m sure that the ‘large, festive meals’ were easily transferred to the last Thursday of November. 

       Halloween has become a big, commercial festival, costumes and treats galore, so I’m not too sure that children still go begging on Thanksgiving Day. They’ve probably got a lot of loot left over from Halloween, and the lure of the Macy’s parade on the TV is just too enticing to miss. We adults fondly recall the simpler times of our younger years.  I suppose that today’s children will recall these days as being the simpler times - and I can’t begin to imagine the times in which they’ll be living in the future, when what today’s adults call ‘excessive’ will to our grandchildren be ‘simple‘. It boggles the mind!



SEE THIS?
EVEN AS A CHILD I WAS A CURMUDGEON!



                                                         

I YAM WHAT I YAM

     As Popeye said – “I yam what I yam,” and I’ve tried to live by that since the time, years ago, when I cut out and saved an article from Real Simple magazine ( and I can't find a date on it) about Finnish women who, on the whole, rarely if ever agonize over their body image.  They are what they are. The article, by now Associate Professor of Writing at the New School, Elizabeth Kendall, was titled The Naked Truth.

    Truth be told, not many of us are happy with our naked bodies.  Oh, I’d like to be many, many pounds lighter, but my body likes the “set point” I’ve been at for over a quarter of a century.  Diets and I don’t get along too well. 

So I dress as neatly and fashionably and comfortably as possible, and let it go at that. My sister and I were always great fans of “gut hiders”, those blouses and other tops that deemphasized our more-than-bountiful embonpoint. Loose is lovely, comfortable is lovely.

    I yam what I yam, and, being diplomatic about it, I do suppose that most other women of a certain age feel the same way.  But ladies, I do wish more of you well-endowed gals would give a bit more thought to how you dress.  Don’t agonize over the body you have and how to change it. By this time, like me, you’ve got to live with it. Worry more about other things such as dressing that body presentably.

    First of all, if the clothes go around you that does not mean they fit. Spandex is, as they say, a privilege. Wearing any tight, knitted garments is for the very young and the very slim. You don’t want folks saying “Looks like she’s been melted and poured into it,” now do you? 

    O.k., that top is a size 16 and you’re a 14, but it’s a tank top and your upper arms are way past flabby. Why would ya?  And just because something jazzy comes in a size you wear doesn’t mean you have to buy it.

    I love to see a well-turned-out woman of any age or size. I must admit though, I do love to sightsee in places like Walmart. Talk about “why would ya?” You know the ones I mean. Some of those folks are a definite hoot. Nudge, nudge, wink wink. That one over there!  You know the ones I mean.

(Well, maybe my halo is on too tight.)

Well, I am more than a little bit sad today: that curmudgeon of curmudgeons, Andy Rooney, a man I admired tremendously, has passed away.  He’s front page news everywhere, and even Wikipedia has updated his page there.  As the NY Times said, he was not everyone’s cup of tea, but he was mine, and I rarely disagreed with his stance on whatever was the subject of the week.  From kitchen gadgets and the proliferation thereof to organized religion and his disdain for it, I concurred. But then, I am a curmudgeon too. 'bye Andy.

THE FORK

Let’s open Fibber McGee’s closet and see what falls out - hey folks, watch out - that’s a fork!  

Hospitalityguild.com says that the kitchen fork goes back to the ancient Greeks.  I’d think it went back to the first ancestor of ours who found a pointed, forked stick came in handy for grabbing his chunk of meat out of the fire. Table forks didn’t come into regular use until the seventh century, and it took several centuries more for the use of them to spread across Europe. The tool of choice - not counting fingers - was always the knife. Anyone who could afford even a crudely made knife used it to cut and then bring food to his mouth. In days of old when knights were bold, it became less and less desirable for folks to come armed to the table. It made for some nasty dinner hours. Thus the fork, handily provided by a genteel host or hostess, came into favor.

Forks started out two-tined, like the forked stick, and then tines were added to make handling food that much easier. In the Victorian era’s spirit of invention where dining became an all-evening event, the upper echelons of society came up with all manner of forks. They did it because they could, and because it provided a bit of one-upmanship in a time when it sometimes seems like that was all those folks had for amusement. I suppose it did make serving and eating easier. One wouldn’t want to eat the meat of an oyster with a dinner fork, or serve a slice of roast beef with a pickle fork, now would one? 

With all those forks - not to mention spoons and knives of various sorts - the Victorians also came up with what they decided was the proper setting for a table: knives and spoons to the right of the plate, forks to the left, glass ware of all kinds, starting above the point of the knife and working to the right, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth.  There were rules for the placement of salad dishes and bread plates, for wine and water glasses, for side dishes and centerpieces. No wonder Upstairs needed all that help Downstairs. It became good manners - and also a good idea - to wait until your hostess took the first bite of any course: you could look to see what fork she used and then do the same without fear of embarrassment. It’s still a good idea today, though now we use table and serving forks of a lot fewer sizes.  Even at a state dinner at the White House they don’t eat as many courses as did some of those elite Victorians, but if you get invited to one and are unsure of the table protocol, be sure to watch the First Lady.

I’m not sure if it is a step in the right direction, but today they’ve come up with the ‘spork’: a utensil combining a spoon and a fork. And then they went a step further to deliver the ‘sporf’. This last one combines a fork, a spoon, and a knife. I think I’d be dribbling my soup through the ‘tines’ of either utensil, or slicing my cheek with the knife part of the sporf.  Until I’m on a rocket ship to Mars where space is at a premium, I think I’ll pass on those.  

Heaven help us, there’s even an Ode to the Fork.  In a spirit of silliness, I googled “ode to the fork” and, I kid you not, up popped a very poor poem with that title.  It reads like a columnar run-on sentence, but someone - the poet is not named - felt passionate enough about his fork to pen an ode to it.  Ah well, I do suppose that such a sturdy, utilitarian object deserves some recognition.  We use it with hardly a thought for its presence: there is no National Fork Appreciation Day, alas.  So give a passing ‘thank you’ to your fork as you have your dinner this evening, and tell this tale to the other folks at the table.  If nothing else, it will make for some interesting conversation.

Addendum: I just read a marvelous, much more extensive essay on the fork. Sara Goldsmith has written The Rise of the Fork, and I do recommend it to you.   June 20, 2012